>>Sinppage
>>>
>>>Just my .02 (US) here. I'd opt for names. I think it's more flexible. Using the field number ties query to the order of the field within the table. If the structure changes, say a new field is inserted, then this would have to change too. Using the name doesn't have this problem.
>>
>>George,
>>
>>While I always prefer names too, I have had many cases where the field number was the only way to get an ORDER BY to work!
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>Jim N
>
>Hidy Jim,
>
>The only place that I *think* (I'm sticking my neck out here) that I've run into that was in doing a SELECT..FROM...UNION ALL... situation, where fields were re-named. Since, however, I had control over the order of the fields, I don't think it applies to this case. However, if you've encountered it elsewheres, I'd be glad to hear about it.
Hidy George,
Don't think I'm a number fan but I find a lot of other places too. Union is the most common as you said. Also ie: percentages and order by them even in FP 2.x

select myvalue*100/myoverall as percent .. order by 1

and other combined, udf() etc all need numbers (no corresponding field). In places where fit regularly I prefer names too of course.
Cetin